Enterprise SSD Server?

H

hmchk

Weaksauce
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Mar 8, 2009
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Hey guys,

Hoping for some help. I've been working with a co-worker to spec out a large capacity SSD storage server which will be used to facilitate large database queries. Right now its taking multple days to do these queries but were hoping some new hardware technology would alleviate that problem. My question to all of you is... (in as simple as I can get it)

What is the largest capacity high IOPS (15k+) enterprise solution available for ~$80k?

The reason I put SSD in the title is because I don't think there are any HHD solutions out there that can meet that IOPS requirement. I am very open to corrections though so please let me know if I am wrong!

Caveat: I am looking for complete product solutions not really commodity hardware built 1 off (I'll make it in my basement) type products. I am currently making inquiries with the major vendors (EMC, Dell, HP, IBM) but they are a pain to deal with and won't spit out prices to save their lives (seems like all they can do is ask your budget).

With all the expertise I found on this board while making my private solution... I figured I'd see if you guys would be interested in something a little more uncommon.

Really appreciate your help,
Garrett

P.S. If anyone wants to talk about the near future possibilities in the SSD realm such as PCIe or 3.5" options I would love to hear about it. Depending on the solutions provided I might be coming up with a small box to play with some of these non 2.5" options. Thanks again.
 
A single Intel SSD could meet 15k IOps depending on the actual workload.
How much space do you need, what is your priority; storage capacity or performance?
 
enterprise ssd you say?

EMC
Netapp
http://superssd.com/ (ramsan)
http://stec-inc.com/

you said high ipos but dont give a value? what is your idea of high? 150-200k?

you can achieve this without SSD in a proper san with cache.

sub.mesa, can you shut up already. you are giving the worst advice in all of these threads. is there a way to block people.
 
outspoken, what advice did i give exactly? I only said a single SSD would already give his performance target. You said he didn't gave any number; but he did: "high IOPS (15k+)". 15.000 IOps is not that high, and my remark was all about that fact.

Also, would you be so kind as to private message me with your concerns about bad advice? I'd very much like to hear about that.
 
The biggest one is Ramsan as mentioned above.

My last company needed more speed for their database interactions. We had a mix of mysql, oracle and also solar (flat file database)

We ended up going with violin http://www.violin-memory.com/ over Ramsan due to cost and implementation ease. Violin was pcie connected to the servers. Ramsan is san based.

The performance though wasn't very impressive - whether it was our application, filesystem or other specifics.

Ramsan wouldn't even give us a demo box, they only have really one that they demo around at least then.

A year ago a terrabyte cost around a half million dollars or more. I'm sure prices have come down quite a bit.

Whatever you do make SURE you get a demo box and do lots of testing. In hindsight we should have just got a quality fast regular SAN.
 
Whats the workload? Data size?

A single Intel SSD wont give you 15k of random IO.

I assume this will used as a caching device for your database or are you trying to replace the current storage you have?
 
InvisiBill said:
No personal experience, but Fusion-io's ioDrives have been mentioned in the news a number of times. http://www.fusionio.com/products/ The data sheet for the original lists IOps numbers ranging from 67k to 119k. The Duo is listed as 121k to 185k.
Click to expand...

The OP said enterprise.

sub.mesa said:
outspoken, what advice did i give exactly? I only said a single SSD would already give his performance target. You said he didn't gave any number; but he did: "high IOPS (15k+)". 15.000 IOps is not that high, and my remark was all about that fact.

Also, would you be so kind as to private message me with your concerns about bad advice? I'd very much like to hear about that.
Click to expand...

Oops, when I read 15k my mind automatically went to SAS15k drives. Agreed, 15k iops is hardly anything at all.
 
outspoken said:
Oops, when I read 15k my mind automatically went to SAS15k drives. Agreed, 15k iops is hardly anything at all.
Click to expand...
Yes; hence my remark whether he needs an enterprise solution at all. If 15k is all he needs, and his dataset is limited in size; he might not need an enterprise SSD solution at all.

Though he said 15k+, indicating that faster would be preferable, i would at least bring the other option of a cheaper product that targets around ~30k and be much more affordable.

A RAID0+1 array of 8 Intel X25-M SSDs in a commercial package with support SLA might be all he needs. If his dataset is very large, this won't be an option of course. But he didn't state anything about capacity requirements.
 
First off... Thank you guys for your help! Mif and I already talked and he was able to talk to me about some great stuff! To address other questions raised.

For the sake of better requirements lets say a 3TB usable minimum capable of being scaled to tens of TB's with an increased budget.


If my IOPS are off... please feel free to correct me. This is basically a solution which will be doing large scale database queries and I tried to guess at an IOPS number which would provide a significant improvement over current at the same time being scalable while not being rediculous.

I apologize about not being more specific and definite.
 
outspoken said:
InvisiBill said:
No personal experience, but Fusion-io's ioDrives have been mentioned in the news a number of times. http://www.fusionio.com/products/ The data sheet for the original lists IOps numbers ranging from 67k to 119k. The Duo is listed as 121k to 185k.
Click to expand...

The OP said enterprise.
Click to expand...

http://www.fusionio.com/press/MySpace-Uses-Fusion/
The MySpace installation consists of replacing multiple server farms of larger two rack unit high (2u) servers that require 10-to-12 15,000 RPM mechanical disk drives each with much smaller 1u servers that use Fusion-io's server-deployed ioDrives. In addition, ioDrive-deployed servers can now replace MySpace servers that hold everything entirely in RAM – a cost prohibitive and power hungry approach previously required to achieve necessary data throughput now attainable through the high-performance, solid-state solutions from Fusion-io.
Click to expand...

While it wouldn't really work as a single point for enterprise-wide storage, it is an enterprise-level item. Since the SLC Duo is only 320GB, it wouldn't really work as a 3TB solution, but it could be great for 10x 300GB servers. FYI, Dell has it for $13,179.99. Don't forget BCB! =)

What's the rough pricing on a RamSan-620? The intarwebs don't seem to list anything at all. The closest I saw was a blurb saying that a conventional device would cost $500k+ to get the same performance, implying that the RamSan is less than that. I'm just curious if it's $50k, $100k, $200k, $400k...
 
I just called about the RAMSAN 620, here are some price points (unofficial) on bare bones solutions:

1TB = 55k
5TB = 220k

They also just released their 630 solution with capacities up to 10TB but they were unable to comment on pricing, although they did say the 630 should save 1-20k over aggregating 620's into the same amount of storage. (The product supposedly leaked a week early so pricing is still being finalized)
 
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